Victims of Fashion
by Kathy Rose
Summary: It's all in the mind.


Title: Victims of Fashion

Author: Kathy Rose

Rating: K

Characters: Malcolm, Hoshi, Trip, Jon

Summary: It's all in the mind.

Author's note: This story came about as a result of a challenge of sorts from Begoogled, who wanted something about clothing or EV suits in honor of the recent auction of the Star Trek items. This was written on the spur of the moment, as you can probably tell.

* * *

Malcolm couldn't wait to get the heavy EV suit off. He'd been in it for almost five hours. With each passing minute the last couple of hours, it had seemed to gain additional weight. Not that he'd say so in front of the others, but he was totally knackered just from having to haul it around. 

At last the airlock recycled and they could step into the changing room. He was tempted to dash off a note of thanks later to whoever had designed the ship to have the changing room adjacent to the airlock. He didn't know if he could make it down the corridor at normal gravity in the cumbersome outfit after being its pack mule for the better part of a shift.

The captain, Malcolm noted, looked tired as he released the seal on his helmet, accompanied by a rush of escaping air. Malcolm was sure the sound was caused by the suit's depressurization, but the captain's heavy exhalation of relief could have contributed to it. He recalled hearing the captain say something about the EV suit aggravating an old water polo injury. His own back gave a spasmodic twitch in sympathy.

Trip staggered over to a bench and plopped down as if standing for one more second was beyond his ability. A heart-felt sigh emanated from the engineer as he, too, broke the seal before taking off the helmet.

"Dang!" Trip complained as he lifted the bulky headpiece up with both hands. "You'd think we could come up with something a little more lightweight than this."

"According to the manufacturer, they are lightweight and comfortable," Jon said wryly.

Trip and Malcolm snorted in unison.

Taking off his own helmet, Malcolm turned to look at the fourth member of their party and was surprised to see Hoshi already had her helmet off and was removing the protective gloves, methodically pulling on one finger at a time. She seemed to be smirking at the three men.

"What are you so happy about?" Malcolm asked her.

She arched an eyebrow. "I'm not happy so much as I can't believe the way you all complain about the EV suits. They're not that bad."

"Not that bad!" said Trip, who was plucking at his own gloves in an effort to remove them, but the fingers kept turning inside out. "They weigh a ton! The helmet alone is enough to break your neck."

"Actually, the EV suits weigh more like twenty-two kilograms," the captain put in with a weary half-smile at his officers' banter.

"Same difference," Trip retorted with a flagrant disregard for accuracy, at least as far as measurement conversion was concerned. "Anything over about fifteen kilograms and it feels like it weighs a ton."

Having divested himself of his own gloves while the others were talking, Malcolm sat on a bench to remove his boots. Hoshi, he saw, had already rid herself of the clumsy footwear and was unsealing the suit. "How come--" he started to ask Hoshi, pausing as his boot came off with an audible pop. Wiggling his toes, he asked, "How come you don't seem to mind being crammed into something that, if you fall over, might prevent you from getting back up?"

"Oh, this is nothing compared to what women put up with in the name of fashion," she replied, nimbly slipping out of the suit and grabbing her uniform from where she'd placed it in a locker.

"Fashion!" Trip exclaimed in disbelief as Jon chuckled.

Malcolm didn't understand how her statement could possibly make sense. "You're going to have to explain the reasoning behind that," he said.

"Yes, Hoshi," said Jon. "I'd like to know how any fashion could possibly be worse than an EV suit."

By this time, Hoshi had stepped into her uniform jumpsuit and was zipping it up. As she moved over to bench to sit down so she could put on her uniform black boots, she stopped for a moment to gaze at each of the three men in turn. "Obviously, women are better adapted to quick changes."

"Must be all the practice," Trip muttered, then ducked as Hoshi threw an EV glove at him.

Malcolm smirked, remembering when he'd thrown a glove at Trip some time back when the engineer had tricked him into believing he was going to write him up after an EV excursion to a Romulan ship. But he quickly dropped the smirk as Hoshi turned her gaze to him. He'd rather not be on the receiving end of what amounted to a slap in the face if she decided to throw her other glove.

But she surprised them all by agreeing with Trip. "Actually, practice is part of it," she admitted. "Women's clothing tends to be much more varied than men's, so we've had greater experience in putting on and taking off different types of clothing. You know, zippers, buttons, snaps, Velcro, ties...the list is endless."

"Wait a minute!" Trip put in. "Just because you have more practice changing into outfits with greater design variation than men normally would wear doesn't mean that an EV suit is any less heavy." With a triumphant expression, he finally pulled one of his gloves off.

"He's right, Hoshi," the captain said from where he was leaning against a bulkhead as he pulled off a boot. "How do you explain that?"

Hoshi gave a theatrical sigh. "I see I'm going to have to spell it out for all of you. Remember when we had that party for Doctor Phlox's birthday a few weeks back?" At their nods, she continued. "Do you remember what I was wearing?"

Malcolm remembered vividly. She'd been wearing a slinky black dress, sleeveless and shoulderless, with no straps. He'd spent half the evening wondering how she kept it from slipping, and the other half wishing it would. What he said, however, was, "Yes, I remember. Very nice black dress."

"That's right," she said. "What else?"

"Um," Malcolm said, feeling heat rush to his cheeks. "Just the dress, wasn't it? You didn't have a...um...jacket or...um...a shawl."

"No," she said, grinning at him. "I was also wearing stilettos."

"Yeah," Trip said. He'd started unsealing his EV suit but had stopped to follow the conversation. "Those high heels with the skinny little spikes for heels. I remember wonderin' how women put up with that."

Hoshi laughed as she pulled on her boots. "Mainly because men like them. But the point is that you have to have a certain amount of balance to be able to wear them and not break an ankle. Not to mention that after about twenty minutes wearing them, your feet start to hurt."

By now Hoshi was fully dressed in her uniform, while her companions were in various states of undress. She stood, pulled her hair out of her ponytail, ran her hands over it to straighten it, and quickly put it back in its customary duty style.

"How can you stand to wear somethin' like that if it hurts?" Trip asked, obviously still thinking about the killer shoes.

Malcolm wondered that, too. He noticed he wasn't the only one waiting for her answer. One of the great feminine mysteries might be about to be revealed.

Hoshi sauntered over to the door, pushed the button, and turned to face them as the door slid open.

"Easy," she said. "The same way I can stand to wear an EV suit."

The three men traded glances. Malcolm knew they all wanted to know, but no one wanted to ask, afraid that they'd look stupid. His eyes locked with Trip's, and then they both turned their gazes on Jon, who sighed in resignation.

"Okay," Jon said. "I'll bite. How can you stand to wear an EV suit?"

Hoshi licked her lips and batted her eyeslashes. "It's all in the attitude," she said in a husky voice.

Three male jaws dropped as Hoshi sauntered out. When the door closed behind her, there was dead silence for several moments until Trip laughed.

"I think she just made us the latest victims of fashion," he said, shaking his head.

"No," Malcolm said, turning to the removal of his other boot, which he let fall to the deck plating with a thunk. He knew they'd been had. "I think it's more along the lines of victims of fashion attitude."

-- the end --


End file.
